GDP 91 reaches 80 % – what this means for Bitcoin

HOME PAGE CRYPTO BITCOIN BIP 91 REACHES 80 % – WHAT THIS MEANS FOR BITCOIN
It’s not easy for Bitcoin enthusiasts over the last few days – many BIPs are flying around our ears, and now at the top of the Bitcoin Improvement Proposals, something seems to have changed. GDP 91 now reached 80%. What does that actually mean?

The scaling debate is the trend topic in the Bitcoin news

Many prefer to keep their feet still and wait, others are insecure and another part can no longer hear the Bitcoin news. But we are coming to an end – whether with rising or falling prices. Read more about SegWit, SegWit2x and UASF here on onlinebetrug.de.

So that not everyone programs past each other and so that everyone knows what it is about, there are the Bitcoin Improvement Proposals, short BIPs. These are texts on GitHub that introduce a certain new code or describe how to deal with a problem in the future. To each BIP belongs a so-called signal, for example bit 1 at BIP 148. Imagine this signal as a “0”, which is now switched to “1”. If you now dig a block, it contains the number 1 at the first position. All others would look at the block and would find the following series of numbers in the block: 1000. So everyone knows through the GDP 148 “Aha! There is one at the first position, so the Miner wants to support GDP 148!”. If you want to support GDP 91, you would signal this at the fourth position.

The dilemma

On 15.11.2016 a GDP with the title “Segregated Witness” started its election campaign in the Bitcoin network. Segregated Witness appeared in GDP 141 and should get a chance to be activated by 15.11.2017. But little happened among the miners – hardly anyone signaled for GDP 141. The author Shaolin Fry changed this with a new GDP that bore a somewhat more drastic title: “Mandatory activation of SegWit Deployment”.

This “mandatory activation of SegWit deployment” appeared in GDP 148. Thus GDP 148 is to be understood as a kind of plan to activate GDP 141.

But even then, not much changed – in May, Miner and Bitcoin’s greats got together in New York and reached a consensus. Since then SegWit2x has been mentioned. SegWit2x consists of two steps: the use of SegWit and then a hard fork a few months later to increase the block size.

But to activate SegWit you need 95% of the hash power in the network. A huge number. And that’s not all: Even if 95% of the miners vote for it, it doesn’t mean that 95% will go along with it. To rule out possible problems, James Hilliard came up with the idea of BIP 91 with the title “Reduced Threshold SegWit MASF”.

The cold shoulder
Hilliards GDP 91 could also be described as the “cold shoulder”. The GDP 91 is signalled on bit 4 and suddenly reached about 80% support in the last blocks. All GDPs have an activation period in which their status is “logged in”.

If, for example, 95 % is reached, an activation period must be waited for afterwards. So far this has been 2016 blocks, or two weeks. GDP 91 is somewhat faster in that sense: you only need 80% support and that only has to prevail for 336 blocks, or 2 days and 8 hours.

After that the GDP is enforced. Why do the miners suddenly jump over to GDP 91? Hilliard knew that it was difficult to get the required percentages, so he proposed the following: Signaling GDP 91 does not accept blocks of non-Segwit supporters. So you kick out the non-supporters. Or else, if several miners only opt for GDP 91, the other miners would miss something – namely valuable blocks.

And we see exactly this reaction on sites like XBT or Coindance. They jump over to GDP 91 in order not to miss anything. In the night from Thursday to Friday at 1 o’clock (currently 202 blocks) everything could already be over and with luck the scaling debate is over for the time being.